Organized in 1924,[12] the congregation's Renaissance revival building that was completed in 1929 typified the large multi-purpose synagogue centers being built at the time,[11] and was from the 1990s until 2010 the only synagogue with a working swimming pool in Brooklyn.[5] The building has been unmodified architecturally since its construction,[5] and in 2006 was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[6]
Membership dropped during the Great Depression, and the synagogue suffered financial hardship, but it recovered, and by 1941 had 1,100 member families. In 1950 the congregation built an adjoining school; at its peak its enrollment was almost 1,000.[2] As neighborhood demographics changed in the late 20th century, and Brooklyn's Jewish population became more Orthodox, the East Midwood Jewish Center absorbed three other Conservative Brooklyn congregations.[13]
The East Midwood Jewish Center had only three rabbis from its founding until 2014.[14] Reuben Kaufman served from 1924 to 1929, Harry Halpern from 1929 to 1977 and Alvin Kass from 1976 to 2014.[2] In 2014, Matt Carl became the rabbi.[3]
History
Founding
East Midwood was organized in 1924[12] by Jacob R. Schwartz, a dentist who was concerned that his two sons had no nearby Hebrew school which they could attend.[15] From the start his intention had been to create a Conservative synagogue: Conservative Judaism was seen as a compromise between Orthodox and Reform, providing the familiar (and lengthy) Hebrew services of Orthodox Judaism, but, like Reform, adding some English prayers.[12] East Midwood differed from earlier Ashkenazi synagogues in New York, as services were to be conducted in Hebrew and English only (not Hebrew and Yiddish), and the members were to come from immigrants from all over Europe, not just one city or region.[16]
East Midwood held its first annual meeting on November 18, 1924 at the Jewish Communal Center of Flatbush[15] (also known as the Flatbush Jewish Center),[17] and there elected its first president, Pincus Weinberg.[2] Weinberg, who was also chair of the Real Estate Committee, was the father of Sidney Weinberg, who rose from the job of assistant porter to head Goldman Sachs from 1930 to 1969. Prior to moving to Flatbush, Pincus Weinberg had been president of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes.[18][19]
East Midwood's first rabbi was Reuben Kaufman, and its first cantor was Jacob Schraeter.[2] Kaufman, a Brooklyn native, had celebrated his bar mitzvah at Baith Israel Anshei Emes.[20]
Building construction
The Real Estate Committee almost immediately purchased land located on Avenue L between East 26th and 27th Streets. Most members, however, felt a location on Ocean Avenue would be more desirable. Issues arose with developing the land on Avenue L, and in 1925 the Committee purchased the current location at 1625 Ocean Avenue in Midwood, Brooklyn. The cornerstone was laid in 1926, and, although not complete, the building was fully enclosed by the autumn, and High Holiday services were held there that year. The Center's Talmud Torah, which had been created in 1925 and held in a temporary structure, also moved into the new building.[2]
Groundbreaking, July 13, 1925.
Designed in the Renaissance revival style,[5] the building was finally completed in 1929 at the cost of $1 million (today $17.7million).[2][11] It typified the new "synagogue-centers" being built at that time, combining the functions of both a synagogue and community center, and included "a synagogue, auditorium, kitchens, restaurant, classrooms, gymnasium, and swimming pool".[11] That year Kaufman left the Center to become the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in Paterson, New Jersey,[14] and Harry Halpern became East Midwood's rabbi.[2] Halpern, who also became an adjunct professor of pastoral psychiatry at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA), would go on to serve as rabbi for 49 years, until his retirement in 1977, four years before his death in 1981.[21]
Great Depression and mid-20th century
Street level doors
The Great Depression took its toll on the congregation, and membership dropped. In order to cope with the financial burdens, dues were raised, teachers were given endorsed notes rather than paychecks, the Executive Secretary was laid off, pews were sold, and individual members provided mortgage guarantees. The synagogue survived, and membership recovered; by 1934 there were 300 members, and by 1944 there were 1,100.[2]
From 1955 to 1985, the famed Abraham Nadel was appointed Choral Director. Nadel was known for his outstanding Choir leadership & musicianship; Specifically for his composition of Sim Sholom. Joseph Eidelson [Jozef Ajdelson] became cantor in 1956.[22] Born in Warsaw, Poland, Eidelson previously served as cantor at Warsaw's Sinai Synagogue, and in 1935 at the Great Synagogue of Vilna, Lithuania.[23]
In October 1968, then Mayor of New York CityJohn Lindsay was booed and jeered by a huge crowd at the East Midwood Jewish Center, in an infamous incident during the 1968 New York City teachers strike.[24] Lindsay had supported a school decentralization plan that had pitted mostly black parents against mostly Jewish teachers and school administration; after the administrator of the Ocean Hill—Brownsville school board dismissed 13 teachers and 6 administrators (mostly Jewish) for opposing decentralization, the United Federation of Teachers "called a strike that closed 85 percent of the city's 900 schools for 55 days".[25]
When Lindsay arrived he was met by a mob of 2,000 people outside the synagogue, who shouted "Lindsay must go" and "we want Shanker". Halpern admonished the protesters, asking "Is this the exemplification of the Jewish faith?", but many replied "yes".[26] Lindsay was heckled off the podium by the audience inside, and his limousine was "pounded on" and "pelted with trash" by the mob outside (which had grown to 5,000) as he drove away.[27] The strike, which was marked by "threats of violence and diatribes laced with racism and anti-Semitism", ended when the New York legislature suspended the administrator and the board.[25]
As Brooklyn's changing demographics made non-Orthodox institutions less viable, East Midwood absorbed three other congregations, including the Jewish Communal Center of Flatbush,[13] where East Midwood had held its first annual meeting,[15] and, in 1978, Flatbush's Congregation Shaare Torah.[29] In 1996, membership was 1,000 families.[28]
At that time the membership had become divided over the issue of role of women in the synagogue. Though some members left the congregation over this issue, by 2009 East Midwood had become fully egalitarian. According to then-Vice President Michael Sucher "Those individuals who championed depriving women of the rights to be full members of the congregation were overruled by a majority of members who wanted to have an egalitarian Conservative congregation".[30]
Upper level doors
The synagogue building has remained architecturally unchanged since its construction, and was from the 1990s until 2010 the only synagogue in Brooklyn with a functioning swimming pool.[5] In June 2006, it was added to the NRHP.[6] That year the congregation received a $300,000 loan from the New York Landmarks Conservancy for repairs for "masonry and steel repairs on the side and rear facades."[31] It also raised $40,000 in order to receive a 2:1 "matching grant" of $20,000 from the Conservancy, and completed the repair work in 2007.[31] In November 2007 East Midwood was awarded a $409,575 New York State Environmental Protection Fund grant to "restore features of the sanctuary including stained glass windows, stained glass dome and skylight."[32][33]
Aaron Pomerantz joined as associate rabbi in 1978. Born in Poland, he had escaped Europe after the outbreak of World War II, moving to Canada and then the United States. There he graduated from Manhattan's Washington Irving High School, and in 1952 received his rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin. From 1948 he had served as ritual director and then rabbi of Congregation Shaare Torah, joining the East Midwood Jewish Center when the two congregations merged. He served until his death in May 2009.[29]
Joseph Eidelson retired to become Cantor Emeritus in 1995, 9 years before his death in 2004.[34]
Sam Levene became East Midwood's cantor in 2004. Born in Jerusalem and raised in Toronto, Levene was a graduate of the H.L. Miller Cantorial School and the JTSA's cantorial program.[3]
Kass retired to become Rabbi Emeritus in 2014.[3] During his tenure Kass, also served as a New York City Police Department chaplain for over 40 years, and had previously served as a United States Air Force chaplain for two years.[28] At one point during his service as Police Department chaplain he and his family received months of 24-hour security after death threats, and at another he defused a hostage situation by providing the hostage taker with sandwiches from the Carnegie Deli.[35] Kass, who teaches ethics at the Police Academy, was instrumental in getting Jewish police officers time off to observe the Sabbath. He also convinced the NYPD Shomrim Society (the fraternal organization of Jewish members of the New York City Police Department) to admit David Durk. Durk, along with the more famous Frank Serpico, had been the source of the allegations of police corruption that led to the formation of the Knapp Commission.[28]
Matt Carl joined as rabbi in 2014. A graduate of Vassar College and the JTSA, he had previously served as rabbi of Battery Park Synagogue in Manhattan and Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn.[3]
East Midwood Day School
East Midwood Jewish Center ran a successful Talmud Torah for after school Jewish instruction.[36] As a child in the 1940s, feminist author Susan Brownmiller attended it two afternoons a week.[37][38] In 1950, the congregation built a three-story school building and a two-story bridge link between the school and synagogue.[5] At its peak in the early 1950s the school had an enrollment of almost 1,000.[2]
East Midwood subsequently created a Conservative Jewish day school, serving students from kindergarten to Grade 8, and also providing "afternoon religious instruction for public school students through high school"[39] operated separately from the Talmud Torah.[36] Author and talk show host Dennis Prager taught at the day school.[40] It was later renamed the Rabbi Harry Halpern Day School, in honor of Rabbi Halpern.[2]
Like the synagogue, the day school also suffered from Brooklyn's changing (and increasingly Orthodox) demographics;[30][41] enrollment had dropped from 400 students to 99 by the early 21st century.[41] Invigorated by a new principal, enrollment climbed to 160 by 2008,[30][41] but the school was still not financially stable.[30] In addition, the day school had become more independent in the 1990s, and its relationship with the synagogue deteriorated to that of a tenant to a landlord.[30] As a result, some of the synagogue's board members wanted to evict the school and find a new tenant.[30] In 2009 the synagogue and the school signed a new agreement to bring the two organizations closer again, under which the synagogue would absorb some of the school's costs, and the parents of school children would become members of the synagogue.[30] According to the synagogue's website, however, in 2018 the day school "reorganized itself, and modified into a more orthodox tradition".[36] The Talmud Torah continued to operate as a congregational school.[36]
Architecture
Ceremony in honor of the laying of the cornerstone, June 13, 1926.
The East Midwood Jewish Center synagogue building's architect is uncertain.[42] The design is officially credited to the Building Committee and Irving Warshaw, the construction superintendent. The architect's name is not recorded in synagogue records, nor on the building's dedicatory plaque. The Center's National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) nomination form, however, argues that the architect was Louis Abramson, based on visual evidence and one piece of written evidence.[10]
Abramson was a leading architect of synagogue-centers at that time. He designed a number of New York examples, including the original synagogue-center, the Manhattan Jewish Center (1918), as well as the Brooklyn Jewish Center, the Flatbush Jewish Center, and the Ocean Parkway Jewish Center (all constructed in Brooklyn between 1920 and 1924). While the Flatbush Jewish Center has been completely remodeled, the Brooklyn and Ocean Parkway Jewish Centers are visually similar to the East Midwood Jewish Center, and the Brooklyn Jewish Center in particular has an identical layout. The written evidence consists of an entry in a souvenir journal commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Flatbush Jewish Center, stating that Abramson drew East Midwood's plans.[10] The NRHP nomination form speculates that Abramson drew the basic plans for the East Midwood Center, and that the Building Committee completed them, in order to save money.[17]
Alternatively, Maurice Courland's 1957 obituary claims the East Midwood Jewish Center as his work.[43] Courland also designed a number of synagogues and New York landmarks, including Brooklyn's Magen David Synagogue.[44]
Famous members
Famous congregational members have included Supreme Court JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg, who was confirmed at East Midwood,[45] rather than having her bat mitzvah there, because (at the time) Conservative Judaism did not have bat mitzvah ceremonies for girls (a fact Ginsberg could not understand).[46][47] When Ginsberg was 13 she also had essays published in the synagogue's bulletin about Stephen S. Wise, and on prejudice and world unity following the Holocaust.[46][47] Filmmaker Marc Levin was also a member;[48] Levin's grandfather, Herman Levin, had been a president of the East Midwood Jewish Center, and had also helped found, and been a long-time lay-leader of, the Reconstructionist movement.[40][49]
East Midwood has also had members who have died under tragic circumstances, including Jason Sekzer, who was killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks,[50] and Danny Farkas, a New York police lieutenant and National Guard soldier who died while stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan.[51][52][53]
Midwood is a neighborhood in the south-central part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded on the north by the Bay Ridge Branch tracks just above Avenue I and by the Brooklyn College campus of the City University of New York, and on the south by Avenue P and Kings Highway. The eastern border consists of parts of Nostrand Avenue, Flatbush Avenue, and Coney Island Avenue; parts of McDonald Avenue and Ocean Parkway mark the western boundary.
The First Roumanian-American Congregation, also known as Congregation Shaarey Shomayim, or the Roumanishe Shul, was an Orthodox Jewish congregation at 89–93 Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The congregation was organized in 1885 by Romanian-Jewish immigrants, serving the Lower East Side's large Romanian-Jewish community. The Rivington Street building, erected around 1860, switched between being a church and a synagogue and was extensively remodeled in 1889. The First Roumanian-American congregation purchased it in 1902 and again remodeled it.
Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes, more commonly known as the Kane Street Synagogue, is an egalitarian Conservative synagogue at 236 Kane Street in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City, New York, United States. It is the oldest continuously operating synagogue in Brooklyn.
Congregation Beth Elohim, also known as the Garfield Temple and the Eighth Avenue Temple, is a Reform Jewish congregation and historic synagogue located at 274 Garfield Place and Eighth Avenue, in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City, New York, United States.
Beth Hamedrash Hagodol is an Orthodox Jewish congregation that for over 120 years was located in a historic building at 60–64 Norfolk Street between Grand and Broome Streets in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was the first Eastern European congregation founded in New York City and the oldest Russian Jewish Orthodox congregation in the United States.
Breed Street Shul, also known as Congregation Talmud Torah of Los Angeles or Breed Street Synagogue, is a former Orthodox Jewish synagogue in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles, California, in the United States. It was the largest Orthodox synagogue west of Chicago from 1915 to 1951, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Congregation Beth Israel is an egalitarian Conservative synagogue and congregation located at 15 Jamesbury Drive in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the United States. Founded in 1924 as an Orthodox synagogue, the congregation formally affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism in 1949, and describes itself as the "leading Conservative congregation in Central Massachusetts."
Congregation Beth Israel Ner Tamid is an egalitarian Conservative synagogue located at 6880 North Green Bay Road in Glendale, a suburb north of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States.
Congregation Shaare Zion is an Orthodox Jewish Sephardic synagogue located at 2030 Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States.
The Syrian Jewish communities of the United States are a collection of communities of Syrian Jews, mostly founded at the beginning of the 20th century. The largest are in Brooklyn, Deal, New Jersey and Miami. In 2007, the population of the New York and New Jersey communities was estimated at 90,000.
Jewish Center may refer to synagogues and their associated community centers in the following locations:
Congregation Beth Jacob Ohev Sholom is an Orthodox Jewish synagogue located at 284 Rodney Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in New York City, New York, United States. The congregation follows the Ashkenazi rite.
Harry Halpern was a Conservative Jewish educator and rabbi who for almost 49 years was the rabbi of the East Midwood Jewish Center (EMJC), in Brooklyn, New York.
Young Israel of Flatbush is a historic former Orthodox Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 1012 Avenue I in Midwood, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States. The congregation worshiped in the Ashkenazi rite.
The Jewish Center of Kings Highway is a historic former Conservative Jewish synagogue, located at 1202–1218 Avenue P in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City, New York, in the United States.
Rabbi Dr. Zvulun Lieberman served as spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Torah in Brooklyn, New York, for half a century and was a Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva University. He was also a principal at the Yeshivah of Flatbush High School in the late 1960s.
Temple Israel Center is an egalitarian Conservative congregation and synagogue located in White Plains, New York, in the United States.
Ben Zion Shenker (1925–2016) was a world-renowned American Hasidic composer and hazzan (cantor), associated with the Modzitz hasidic dynasty. Shenker was born in the heyday of the American hazzan. He became interested in the art as a child, and was performing on radio by his early teens. Soon after, he became close to Rabbi Shaul Taub, the Holocaust-surviving Modzitz Grand Rabbi, who was known for his mystical Hasidic compositions. He dedicated much of his life to recording and publishing the large stock of pre-war Modzitz songs, as well as Taub's post-war work. Shenker created a music label, Neginah, for the purpose of recording those songs, and himself became a composer of hundreds Modzitz moded songs.
Rabbi Elias (Eli) Schwartz was an American synagogue rabbi, a yeshiva principal, and an author.
↑ "Finding Aid". East Midwood Jewish Center. Archived from the original on 2020-09-18. Retrieved 2020-08-14.
↑ Błaszczyk, Leon Tadeusz (2014). Żydzi w kulturze muzycznej ziem polskich w XIX i XX wieku: słownik biograficzny (in Polish). Warszawa. ISBN978-83-939735-1-4. OCLC903074583.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Gay, Kathlyn (ed.). "Brownmiller, Susan (1935–", American Dissidents: An Encyclopedia of Activists, Subversives, and Prisoners of Conscience, Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2012.
Greenwald, Judith R., "First Synagogues: The First 144 Years of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes (The Kane Street Synagogue)", in Abramovitch, Ilana and Galvin, Seán. Jews of Brooklyn, University Press of New England, November 1, 2001. ISBN978-1-58465-003-4
"Maurice Courland, Architect, Dies at 65; Expert on Synagogue and School Design", The New York Times, November 18, 1957, p.31.
Parker, Milton; Freeman, Allyn. How to feed friends and influence people: the Carnegie Deli—a giant sandwich, a little deli, a huge success, John Wiley & Sons, 2004. ISBN978-0-471-68056-7
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
